Are you interested in mining, but not sure if it is still profitable, or is it worth buying a mining rig now and starting mining? If this is what you are looking for, then you came to the right place.

In this article, we are going to talk about mining in 2022. We are going to check the potential earnings of an average rig and examine if it is worth starting mining in 2022.

Is mining cryptocurrencies currently profitable?

Yes, mining is profitable in early 2022. Of course, the profit margin depends on the electricity price you are paying. The lower the electricity price, the better the profits.

If you already own mining hardware, then there should be no reason not to start mining.

If you are worried about damaging your hardware you should read this article where we explain why GPU mining is very safe, in some cases even safer than gaming. We also suggest watching this video from Linus Tech Tips, where Linus explains that mining does not damage GPUs.

What was the mining profitability in 2018 and 2020 like?

The profits did drop by around 40% since the peak of the mining profitability in April/May of 2021. But the profits in 2021 were abnormally high, the return on investment was just about two or three months. You would cover the GPU costs in just a couple of months.

Even if the profits dropped by 40%, the earnings are still higher than what the miners from 2018 and 2020 experienced. Back in 2018, GPUs would barely break even. Sometimes, the GPU would not be able to create any profits.

In late 2020, the profits did increase and mining was profitable. But not as much as we are used to now.

What would mining with 6x 6800XT make?

We used NiceHash's past profitability data and made some calculations on what would a miner with 6x 6800 XT or 360 MH/s earn in the past years.

Mining in 2019

A miner would earn approximately 0.0005 BTC per day. Back in 2019, that would be only $4 per day considering that the price of BTC was around $8,000 at the end of 2019.

At the current price of Bitcoin (∼$40,000) that would be $20 per day.

We have incomplete data for 2019. Only the last 127 days of the year were used.

Mining in 2020

A miner would earn approximately 0.0008 BTC per day. Back in first half of 2020, that would be only $7.5 per day considering that the price of BTC was around $9,500.

By the end of 2020, the price of BTC increased to $20,000 and 0.0008 BTC per day would equal to $16 per day.

At the current price of Bitcoin (∼$40,000) that would be $33 per day.

A miner with 360 Mh/s would earn a total of 0.292 BTC in 2020.

Mining in 2021

A miner would earn approximately 0.0006 BTC per day. Back in 2021, that would be approximately $30 per day considering that the average price of BTC was around $50,000.

At the current price of Bitcoin (∼$40,000) that would be $25 per day.

A miner with 360 Mh/s would earn a total of 0.222 BTC in 2021.

Mining in 2022

A miner would earn 0.0004 BTC per day in the first 47 days of 2022. Based on the current price ($40,000) that is around $16 per day.

Conclusion

As we can see from the examples above, 2021 was the most profitable in terms of fiat currency. On average a miner earned approximately $30 per day while the second most profitable year for fiat earnings up to now is 2022 with $16 per day.

But looking at Bitcoin earnings, we can see that 2020 was the year that the miner would earn the most Bitcoin per day, an astonishing 0.0008 BTC. Yet the fiat earnings were low because the price of Bitcoin was low.

We can come to the conclusion that mining in a bear market (when fiat earnings are low) can prove to be an excellent choice. It is not all about fiat earnings, miners should observe earnings in crypto also.

What can we expect will happen with mining profits in 2022?

It is hard to predict. The major turning point will be Ethereum’s move to Proof-of-Stake. If this is postponed again, and the Ethereum price does not plummet, we can expect relatively normal profits throughout 2022.

If ETH PoS does happen in 2022, then we can expect the profits to lower substantially. But this is not as critical as one might expect. Mining will go on, there are other projects like Ravencoin or Flux that allow mining with GPUs and are profitable right now. It's just that they are not as highly profitable as mining Ethereum.

We suggest using NiceHash profit switching software like NiceHash Miner or NHOS once/if the ETH goes to PoS as then there will be multiple equally profitable coins to mine and it will be very time-consuming to manually switch between all of these coins on a regular basis.

As always, feel free to join our community and share your thoughts! You can chat with NiceHash representatinves and thousands of other miners in our Discord server and subreddit.

Disclaimer: This is not investing advice. Always do your own research before investing. Profitability is constantly changing. We do not take any responsibility if the mining profits are not as shown in the above examples.